Our proposed role for Yap1 as a pro-survival factor in ESCs is consistent with other studies done in cancer or epithelial contexts (Lin et al., 2015; Rosenbluh et al., 2012; Song et al., 2015; Zhao et al., 2016), but our work is the first study to show such a contextual, differentiation-specific role for Yap1 in ESCs. The gene discussed is YAP1; the disease is cancer.